SharePoint Online: How to Enable or Disable Subsite Creation?

Requirement: Disable subsite creation in SharePoint Online.

How to enable subsites in SharePoint Online?

The traditional information architecture in SharePoint site collections and subsites is site collections have a top-level site and may have a number of sub-sites underneath. However, the recent recommendation from Microsoft is to avoid subsites and create site collections for different segments of your business and group-related sites with Hub sites if needed. This is because you can manage site features such as permissions, storage, Add-ons, services, sharing, etc., at the site collection level. As the SharePoint Online subsites are going away, it’s a good idea to restrict the subsite creation option at the tenant level. You can turn off subsite creation from the SharePoint Online Admin Center.

1. Login to SharePoint Online Admin Center >> Click on Settings >> Click on the “Classic settings page” link.

   

2. On the settings page, under the “Subsite creation” section, we’ve:
   • Disable subsite creation for all sites (Renamed from: Hide the Subsite command) – Turning off SharePoint subsite creation on all sites
   • Enable subsite creation for classic sites only (Renamed from: Show the Subsite command only for classic sites) – Turning on SharePoint subsite creation only on Classic sites
   • Enable subsite creation for all sites (Renamed from: Show the Subsite command for all sites) – Turning on SharePoint subsite creation on all sites

     

Select “Hide the subsite command” and then click on the “Save” button at the bottom of the page to commit your changes. This disables the “subsite” option from the site contents page. If you want to enable subsite creation in SharePoint Online, set this option to “Show the subsite command for all sites”.

These changes could take some time to reflect. You can still group site collections using Hub Sites in SharePoint Online, allowing you to connect multiple sites in one manageable structure without using subsites.

And users cannot create a subsite in SharePoint Online, even if the user tries to navigate to the URL to create a subsite directly, E.g., https://tenant.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/newsbweb.aspx, SharePoint Online displays an error message: “New subsites are not available for your organization. Create a new site instead.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, the process for enabling or disabling subsite creation in SharePoint Online is relatively straightforward. A SharePoint Online administrator can do it through the settings of the Admin center. It is worth mentioning that Microsoft recommends creating Hub Sites instead of Subsites to organize sites in SharePoint Online, So it’s better to disable the subsite creation in SharePoint Online!